Monday, 6 February 2012

Is This the Future have released this Graffiti on Girls calendar for 2012. Features graffiti from a list of international writers. If you visit the website you'll find a wealth of information on the artists including video footage of the writers at work.

The producers have recently brought the price down from £12.99 to £8.99. Lucky LSD members can get an additional 20% off the calendar and stocks are selling fast. They went down a storm in the office, everyone wanted one...

Friday, 3 February 2012

We caught up with street artist Stik yesterday as he prepared for one of his most risque art placements since starting out. We were out and about taking photos when we bumped into Stik. Once he told us where he was going we just had to tag along. We actually filmed it and will edit for release in coming weeks...We are happy to report that he wasnt arrested and the piece has since vanished... More in the next edition of LSD Magazine (issue 9)...

Thursday, 2 February 2012

Tearing a finer shade of gobsmacking into some seriously stunning walls, Australian born, Glasgow based artist Smug is a man on absolute fire. Harnessing phenomenal can control into outrageously well defined characters bursting with life, love, laughter, rippling pathos and an electro magnetic radiance, his jaw dropping photo realism has hit a new gear of total awesomeness. Real rockets through hints of surreal, rips up some bad boy biznizz on the fly, ram raids science fiction into a concrete star system, skids into a grinning wink and lovingly slides down liquid sensuality on the shadowy curve back into the human form. From the richly animated to the nano weighted his precision characters and devilishly honed visual spaces take on a gloriously unpredictable whirl of subjects, all impeccably finished to hypnotic standards of funky excellence...

How did you initially start out in Australia

I originally started out by skating and hanging out on the streets at night with a group of mates just being kids and writing our names on walls and listening to Hip Hop. Graffiti was very much a part of that culture, so it all came together. I was living in a very small town at the time with only really 3 other graffiti artists so we pretty much had to build our own little scene ourselves with influences coming more from magazines and then the internet than other artists. The longer we painted we started travelling to the nearest city, Wollongong, which actually had a quite a strong scene with people doing work that even to this day I would stop at and think – wow - what an amazing wall. Crisp and clean, amazing letters, and full on productions with backgrounds and characters, so that was a heavy inspiration to me. But the scene there now doesn’t seem to be as strong – it’s much more about bombing today, but at the time, there was so much mind blowing stuff going on that it gave me a big, big push.

Was it always Smug – obviously it’s got connotations – how did that name stick Mate – I have no clue. Everyone’s got these funny stories about how they got their name, and I simply don’t remember –probably found it in a dictionary or something. I had a number of tags in the first few years of painting. Unfortunately it was SMUG that stuck…

How did you start developing into characters and more figurative stuff

Well for the first couple of years it was just bombing – no dubs or throw ups or anything like that – just dedicated tagging without even having picked up a spray can. But as soon as I got the can in my hand, I started to really become part of the local scene and my development started to accelerate as I began doing my letters almost straight away. It was a natural progression from tags into throw ups and on into Wild Style pieces, but I’d always had this feeling for characters. Even as a kid back in school, I’d be the one spending 3 days drawing up the title page for a my history book or something and so while I won’t say it came naturally to me years later – it was always there on some level. I was doing all the usual B Boy stuff and a lot of Manga when I first started out, but as I got better with my use of the can and continued evolving past that cartoony feel, it just took on its own momentum. At first it was just flat colour with a bold outline, and then I’d start cutting back that outline and making it perfect - then blending my colours and moving up and up and up, continually challenging myself. Even to this day, I think that photo realism is the hardest thing for me technically – letters are tough too because I’m never completely happy with the outlines, but every single time I do photo realism, it’s seriously challenging but then, I do love that drive to keep pushing myself.

Overflowing with vibrant energy and radiant positivity, Garfield Hackett, the man behind the living, breathing creative matrix of Cordy House and one of the key driving forces behind the now legendary Mutate Britain has got a new project. And we’re talking some seriously next level evolution both in creative terms and in redefining the underground’s relationship with the wider world. Hardwiring London back into it’s lost consciousness and setting the spark for a dazzling new world of creative possibility, London’s Pleasure Gardens are about to explode into the throbbing heart of the capital. The original Pleasure Gardens were a sublime space where social hierarchy dissolved into the shady walkways of secret serendipity - where rampant hedonism rode free flow expression and Hogarthian downtown flooded through the blue blooded veins of polite society...

Just to take you back a bit – how did Cordy House originally come about

Well in a nutshell, a friend of mine told me about this space, and having spoken to a few people about the potential it had, we took it over and ended up being there for about 5 years. The initial idea was to just do a little show in the building and things just mushroomed from there. We basically created a home for people to do stuff rather than formulating this cunning long term master plan - we had no idea how things would evolve – whether it would be major or not, but there we were with the opportunity to do something and on that basis – it was simple – let’s give it a go. It really was a case of things connecting up organically and riding their own momentum, and if you want the honest truth, it was a perfect creative hotbed because through no overt planning or specific goal beyond creating this free creative space and seeing how it developed, we got some great people together into one zone. And suddenly you had this flood of collaboration – often between people who never would have collaborated otherwise, and that idea of putting extraordinary people together and seeing what happens is exactly what I love doing.

Did that dynamic of a living, breathing 24 / 7 space create a channel of energy that no conventional gallery or exhibition could ever dream of generating

Oh yeah...completely. This was people’s lives. People were there day and night, day in, day out and rather than being limited to a show here or a show there, it was a constant, living, breathing show. There was never any sense of a 6 week exhibition that would run its course before we started to pull the next one together in that traditional linear format – from the moment we started to the moment we ended, it was this relentless, shape shifting burst of creative expression. And I say ended, but we’re planning on getting back in there at the end of the year to start doing some more stuff.

So how did you then connect up with Joe Rush and the Mutoids to the point of total collaboration with Mutate Britain

I’d known of them for years and we’ve totally been in the same circles both directly and indirectly for a long, long time. Don’t forget, I’m an old geezer and from the same generation as Joe so I remember them from the early 80’s and their original projects and parties in West London. But over and above that, I think it was the timing. You know when things just HAPPEN. When things just cross paths at the perfect time and they fuse and roll from there. Well that’s exactly what this was and it totally clicked. I have to thank Spencer Style who was the person that introduced us to Cordy and the person that re-introduced us to Joe, and once we started talking, we just knew that we were completely on the same page, and it all synched beautifully. Our family have the same philosophy as Joe and the Mutoids and you always know when something really special is happening when there’s that sense of having been together for years after 5 minutes. It seemed so – it WAS so natural, and nothing we did from that point onwards felt like work in any way – borderline freaky in one sense but pure connection on every level. I think it was a great way for them to get back into London because after they had done Burning Man, they were looking for a project to do back in the UK, and Cordy House was the perfect marriage for them – the perfect place – the perfect fit.

“I wish I hadn’t written my name so large.” She has her back to me, scrubbing the wall of the public convenience, in the park. Two other girls are doing the same thing. They are sound. I like them, They’re not gangsters, crooks or nutters. They are just three naughty kids who got caught putting graffiti on the walls. Pointless, aimless stuff. Their words, not mine. The punishment is community service which I am supervising. They have to remove their own handiwork. It is cold, A harsh grey winter in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Civil war grey. They finish and we leave. There is a complaint later from the parks supervisor, about the mess we leave behind – paint particles, dust, that kind of thing. You can’t please everyone. Cut to summer, hot, steamy, 100+. I’ve learnt a lot since the winter. Firstly that the title “Community Liaison” covers a lots of bases and secondly where to buy some brushes to tidy up the mess we leave behind when the graffiti gets scrubbed off. Started covering it up as well. Tidier.

Some of the people I take on graffiti community service are youngsters who have committed various crimes, involving gangs, drug use or getting into fights or stealing. Some have not done anything like that but are excluded from school for other discipline issues, such as swearing at a teacher. Community service is part of their programme. That is common, here in the U.S.A. I also take out prisoners from the jail. Eyebrows were raised when I started. People thought it was a risk to me to be on my own. Any number up to a dozen. What are they going to do to me? Eat me? Really. I discovered they were happy to come out on work detail and…..work. Painting over the graffiti or scrubbing it off. They have a sense of community service too. “I’ve always been a bit of a bad boy – it’s good to do something which people really appreciate and does some good too. I’m a bit tired of doing bad all the time. It’s good to do some good.” He is very large, with no neck but a gentle voice. He is with seven others from the jail as we paint over the building near the High School. It is covered with “Crips” “Blood” and all the rest of it. Rumour has it that the people who did it are very dangerous and very near. They don’t take kindly to people interfering with their paint jobs.

He squints at me in the burning sun. He knows what I am thinking. “What are they going to do to us? Really?” Bit like what I was thinking about them. Everything comes around. They finish painting. It is a very good job. All gleaming white paint. All covered up. It didn’t do any harm that one of the guys from the jail was a professional painter and decorator, before he got locked up. He takes a real pride in the afternoon’s work, giving instructions and advice about the mixing of the paint and the density before it is applied and the temperature. It is a real art and he takes a lot of pride in it. The Community Police Officer drops by as we are packing up. I go out with him, in the patrol car each week. We give books to kids that are hanging around in the street and talk to them about education and literacy and how it can help you get on in life. He is a good man and the prisoners relax in his company despite the traditional culture of mistrust of people in uniform...

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The magazine will be bringing the concepts and currents behind the art alive, reflecting and helping to generate the creativity so vibrant in our streets today. Intuition and insight served up like you never thought of it but always knew it. Our culture crystallised online with contributions from writers, street artists, poets, DJ's, urban philosophers, producers, the odd visionary genius and all round geezas..... FREE!

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